Frank Bruni, I’m Not Sorry

There was a time when Frank Bruni was the best food writer on the planet. He was the head restaurant critic at the New York Times and he wrote about food the way I hoped someone at the Times would write about food. He loved Blizzards, which is always the smart play. He banged out mean reviews that I read many times over. He admitted to grubbing on precooked Tyson chicken parts while driving alone. This was a good egg.

I have no fucking idea what happened to that Frank Bruni. All I know is that he switched over to the opinion page of the Times, got infected with whatever cranial bleach they pass around to columnists in that section of the paper, and withered away into the kind of political columnist you only pay attention to when they fuck up.

Thankfully, he just gave us one last chance to pay attention. Bruni has decided to leave his columnist gig in order to take a job at Duke University, thus completing his decade-long journey into disgrace. As a parting gift, he’s bequeathed us one final, uncut turd of a post. About the plague of snark, which is very new and important. Can you BELIEVE people on the Internet are snarky now? I sure can’t. Anyway, let’s read this piece of shit column and make fun of it.

That’s the headline. And at first I was like, oh OK, the headline is sarcastic. A real Billy the Kid apology.  But then I was like, you know what? This is latter-day Frank Bruni we’re talking about. I bet he actually IS sorry. To Ted Cruz. That Ted Cruz. Not some other Ted Cruz who runs an auto body shop in Las Cruces. The actual Ted Cruz. Let’s see if my corrective instincts were onto something!

Here comes the twist!

UPDATE: There was no twist.

Every Frank Bruni column for the past decade may as well have had “couldn’t settle on a topic” as a digital watermark that follows you down the screen.

True. It’s very easy to unload on Ted Cruz. And do you know why? BECAUSE HE’S TED CRUZ.

But…………….?

It Follows was a horror movie about an unknown curse that people unknowingly pass onto others after having sex with them. It’s a morbidly amusing and extremely tense allegory about sexually transmitted diseases. By contrast, Ted Cruz is a leaking stoma. So yes, you failed to advance a worthwhile cause here. Because you were too nice.

THE SNIDE TIDE. THE SNARK PARK. THE SAR-CHASM. THE JISM SCHISM. Instead of taking the high road—with Ted Cruz—Frank Bruni chose to impugn Cruz’s character instead. I am crushed by this negligence. Every day I wake up and I think to myself, “Are op-ed people being nice enough to a man who supported the Capitol riot, alienated literally everyone around him including his children, and fled his home state for Mexico when it was suffering from blackouts that would eventually kill hundreds, if not thousands? Or did they take the EASY way out and correctly point out that he’s a shitty person?” Well, Frank Bruni chose the latter route. He rolled with the MEME TEAM.

I know! It’s almost like these people are compelled to voice their OPINIONS through EDITORIAL means. Like they settle on a topic!

“Kids, today let’s find a noun that rhymes with CANCEL.”

I’ve always wanted to read a columnist who apparently never wanted to actually be a columnist.

And how would you describe these dynamics, sir? Would you say they are “civil”?

TOXIC! Oh so toxic. Republicans are out here furiously attempting to prevent Critical Race Theory being taught in schools when A) No one has taught it yet, and B) They don’t actually know what it is, but that it’s definitely too mean to white people. And you’re telling me the right move here is to INSULT them for it? Who’s the poisonous one now, I ask you? Why, such rancor leaves a bitter aftertaste not seen since I had a decanter of artisanal fernet at State Bird Provisions! Now, are you readers horny for alliteration? I bet you are!

The danger of our discourse. The fury of our far-reaching, false foreshadowings of fascism. The Wolf of Wall Steet.

That’s all true, if we were talking about anything other than Ted Cruz.

Decisive judgments are "interesting" and "provocative," and that’s anathema to what I and the Paper of Record stand for. Whatever happened to being an ambivalent shithead?

BUT!

And isn’t that almost kinda sorta maybe possibly the BEST kind of opinion writing? I think there’s a chance it could be, but I have to consider the possibility that it’s not. Time will tell!

BUT!

And was there any honor in Charlie Chaplin mocking Hitler during WWII by making The Great Dictator? I say no. I say that Chaplin should have made The Dictator Does Some Concerning Things That Give Me Pause But He Does Have Some Good Ideas.

The infernal insults. The jocular jest. The devilish damnations. Whatever happened to MANNERS, I ask you?  I don’t think the tenor of things has EVER been this bad.

[looks back at world history]

[remembers Caesar being murdered by his own colleagues]

[remembers the Crusades]

[remembers the Inquisition]

[remembers Henry VIII starting a war that one time in order to get his six-year-old son married to a Scottish baby]

[remembers a Civil War that took place right here and lasted many years]

[remembers not one but two world wars, which somehow didn’t put mankind off war afterward]

Nope.  Never this bad.

What’s journalism? Right now there are only two working newspapers and the only magazine left is Cat Fancy.

It brings me no joy to report that the snark will continue until morale improves.

BUDDY HAVE I EVER GOT THE PAPER FOR YOU TO READ THEN! You’ll love it. It’s based in New York, which has great food. It has insane resources, which it squanders almost as a matter of policy. And it never takes a stand on ANYTHING. You should subscribe to it when you get to Duke, except that reading is illegal now in North Carolina!

But I qualified “haven’t written” with “not much” because there is the matter of tone.

I wish that you had been brave enough to write about something the entire right-wing segment of your department has written about, daily, since before the dawn of man. Imagine my disappointment right now. The longing of lament lingers in my loins.

“Actually, dear reader, YOU’RE the problem.”

And you came to Frank Bruni for bold sentences and tidy talking points! LIKE THESE!

I can. Many, many people can.

Again…

Here you go.

Hit me, Franklock.

We absolutely do. Comprehensive voting protections would get passed, as would expanded stimulus, infrastructure bills, vital judicial and executive appointments, tangible improvements to a shit healthcare system. Oh, an any inquiry into the Capitol Riot would be enacted by a simple majority instead of getting strangled in the womb by three dozen Nazis who represent, in total, nine voters.

Today I bring you two undeniable truths. One: we don’t know the truth. Two: Some say the truth is bad, while others say that it is good. And who am I, a man who can publish his thoughts to millions of people around the world at any time, on a whim, to say who is right?

NO IT DOESN’T WHAT KIND OF FUCKING COINS DO YOU FLIP

NONE BECAUSE THEY’D ALL BE FUCKING FIRED WHICH IS WHAT YOU SHOULD HAVE BEEN.

That reader was a fucking dipshit.

He was not.

My bilious booing. My irrationally impish ink.

You can read this and understand why the Times is a lost cause. It doesn’t matter who runs it going forward. It doesn’t matter who replaces Bruni on the masthead (probably Tom Cotton). If someone whose very job is to vocally hold the powerful accountable ends his extremely long tenure at the paper like, “You know what? I should have been nicer to Ted Fucking Cruz,” you know exactly what kind of publication you’re dealing with. I’m not sorry for shitting on the Times, Frank Bruni. Or for shitting on Ted Cruz. Or for shitting on you. None of that induces regret within me. Tonight I’ll sleep like a fucking polar bear.

You mean this Dana Bash?

And what if my column was nothing but questions that I’m too cowardly to answer with conviction?

Well you’ll have plenty more to think about at Duke, where fascists-in-training go to learn that most establishment liberals, especially ones at the Times, are too feeble to stop them. They’ll have plenty to learn from you, Professor Punching Bag.

[NYT]